Serbian president rejects peacekeeping troops

Posted: Tuesday, February 16, 1999

By Dusan StojanovicAssociated Press

PARIS -- Serbia is willing to make major compromises and grant rival ethnic Albanians broad self-rule, but it adamantly opposes having NATO troops police a Kosovo agreement, the republic's president said Monday.

For the first time since a Kosovo peace conference started Feb. 6, Milan Milutinovic indicated Serbs were willing to give up most of the demands that have stalled the talks -- with the exception of NATO peacekeeping troops.

''We don't think that the troops are needed if the agreement is good and acceptable to the majority of people living in Kosovo,'' Milutinovic told The Associated Press, adding that abandoning NATO demands for a peacekeeping force was a ''precondition'' for any eventual peace deal.

Asked whether the proposed NATO deployment was the major sticking point and the rest was negotiable, he said: ''Yes, that is right.''

Milutinovic spoke as the Kosovo conference headed toward a fast-approaching deadline, with the United States pressuring the Serbians to make a deal with Kosovo Albanians or prepare to be bombed by NATO forces.

More than 2,000 people have been killed in a year of clashes in Kosovo between ethnic Albanian separatists and Serbian security forces. The province is in southern Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic, and 90 percent of its 2 million people are ethnic Albanians.

Milutinovic said any NATO deployment would ''badly damage our sovereignty'' and that NATO bombing raids in the absence of an agreement would amount to ''an aggression and a war crime.''

Also on Monday, British military vehicles and heavy guns were moved from Germany to Greece for use in a possible NATO intervention in Kosovo, the British army said.

With just five days to a deadline set by the United States and five of its European allies for a deal to be signed, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Monday visited the 14th-century French chateau where the talks were being held.

Russia is pushing as hard as the United States for a resolution of the Kosovo conflict by Saturday. But Moscow opposes the use of NATO airstrikes and is noncommittal on the deployment of international peacekeeping troops.

Ivanov, after meeting with both delegations, told reporters he was convinced ''they realize the importance of the moment.''

''I would like to emphasize, once again, that only a political settlement is possible,'' he said. ''There is no military solution to this problem.''

Asked about eventual military intervention in Kosovo to support a peace plan, Ivanov said, ''This question will be discussed with Belgrade.''

On Sunday, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright berated Milutinovic at a Paris meeting that Serbian sources described as extremely unpleasant.

The Albanians, she said later, seemed to accept the international peace plan granting them virtual self-rule in Kosovo but keeping the Serbian province within existing borders.

But the Albanians want NATO troops to police any agreement because they don't trust the Serbian government.

NATO already is making plans to send up to 30,000 troops into Kosovo, including 4,000 U.S. troops.

A Kosovo Albanian close to the talks, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Monday that Albright laid out three possibilities to their delegation:

n The Kosovo Albanians don't sign and they lose all American support. The United States shuts down Kosovo's borders with Albania and Macedonia, closes all roads and cuts off supplies to the rebels.

n The Kosovo Albanians sign and the Serbs don't. The United States gives strong support to Kosovo's Albanians and bombs the Serbs.

n Everybody signs. NATO enters Kosovo and polices the agreement.

On Sunday, Albright brought Serbian and Kosovo Albanian delegations to the table for the first time since the talks began. Previously, international mediators, led by American Christopher Hill, had been shuttling between the two delegations on separate floors of the Chateau de Rambouillet.

An American official said he did not know if direct talks were continuing.

Also Monday in Serbia, 33 ethnic Albanians went on trial on charges of ''terrorism,'' while the government released another 40 Kosovo Albanians detained in connection with a weekend bombing.